Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office has confirmed that the city has trained about 100 members of the Seattle Police Department’s Community Policing Team (CPT) and bicycle patrol officers on how to implement and enforce the rules against unauthorized “camping” in public spaces, such as sidewalks, parks, and publicly owned property. The city recently expanded the Navigation Team to include two new field coordinators overseeing encampment removals and two new outreach workers, who will do outreach work previously performed by the nonprofit REACH, which is no longer participating in encampment removals.

“The CPT and bike officers have been trained to implement the existing [Multi Departmental Administrative Rules], which lay out when and how encampments can be removed), the encampment rules, and how to connect with the Nav Team,” Durkan spokesman Mark Prentice says. “People can remain in the public right of way but belongings that are obstructing… ‘pedestrian or transportation purposes of public rights-of-way’ are not allowed, which is why a Navigation Team member will be available to offer storage and/or services. … This additional effort by CPT and bike officers does not impact or change the MDAR or the City’s compliance with these rules.”

Perhaps unintentionally, the Navigation Team no longer creates a list of “weekly unauthorized encampment removals”; instead, the most recent version of this document refers to these removals as “relocations.”

Under Durkan, as I reported last month, the Navigation Team has shifted its emphasis and now focuses on removing tents and belongings that constitute an “obstruction” under the city’s rules. Once an encampment is deemed an “obstruction,” the Navigation Team can remove it without notifying residents or offering them shelter or services. Although, in practice, officers often do tell residents who happen to be around during these unannounced removals about available shelter beds, outreach workers and unsheltered people have told me that they’re less likely to trust uniformed police officers than social service workers who show up between removals and get to know them outside the charged environment of a sweep.

Empowering another 100 or so police officers to enforce the rules against camping will undoubtedly expand the city’s ability to remove unauthorized encampments without notice, but it’s unclear what the long game is here, or if there is one.

The original goal of the Navigation Team, when it was created as part of the city’s response to the homelessness emergency back in 2017, was to “work… with unsheltered people who have urgent and acute unmet needs,” by building relationships with people living outdoors and convincing them to come inside (ideally, to new low-barrier, 24/7 shelters with case management and services). Today, the team still offers referrals to shelter and services, but much of their work involves removing encampments, cleaning up sites, and watching people move back in over a matter of days or weeks—a tedious process of, yes, sweeping people from one place into another in a seemingly endless cycle. (Perhaps unintentionally, the Navigation Team no longer creates a list of “weekly unauthorized encampment removals”; instead, the most recent version of this document refers to these removals as “relocations.”)

Since 2017, the Navigation Team has nearly doubled in size, from 22 to 38 members. In that time, the number of contracted outreach workers has stayed the same, while the number of police, management, and support staff has grown dramatically. (Currently, in addition to 13 police officers, the team includes three data analysts, one team lead, one encampment response manager, one outreach supervisor, one communications manager, an administrative specialist, and an operations manager). Empowering another 100 or so police officers to enforce the rules against camping will undoubtedly expand the city’s ability to remove unauthorized encampments without notice, but it’s unclear what the long game is here, or if there is one. The city has added some new shelter beds (including 160 mats in the lobby of city hall, which are accessible for just 8 hours a night and don’t include showers, food, or services), but nowhere near enough to meet the need. Last year, according to the latest Point In Time Count of people living unsheltered in King County, the number of people living in tents rose from 1,034 to 1,162 even as the count of people living unsheltered shrunk.

I scrambled back up the path, stumbling a bit on my way back to the accessible, level, and totally empty park. I can’t imagine whose “pedestrian and transportation purposes” anyone living in those brambles could possibly be obstructing.

This week (over the newly expanded seven-day Navigation Team schedule), 13 encampments are on the list for “relocation.” All but one have been deemed “obstructions” exempt from the notice and outreach requirements.

Over the weekend, I visited a couple of encampments. One had just been visited by the Navigation Team, which hauled away a dump truck full of refuse, including soiled clothing, food wrappers, and large items dumped on the site by people from outside the camp. At the base of the hillside where people had set up their tents, there were still piles of loose trash and scattered needles, along with several full purple garbage bags provided through a pilot city trash pickup program.

The second encampment was one that’s scheduled for removal as an “obstruction” next week. The site was in a lightly forested area along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., on the edge of an underused park that offers stunning views of downtown Seattle. I looked for the “large amounts of garbage, debris, and human waste” that the Navigation Team said were present at the site. It wasn’t easy to find signs of human habitation—from the park, the only way to access the place where people were living was by scrambling down a steep dirt hillside, or by bushwhacking through brambles and weeds to find a series of primitive trails. Eventually, I saw a beach umbrella, a mattress pad, and a few small piles of trash (but no human waste) that hinted that the area might be inhabited. I scrambled back up the path, stumbling a bit on my way back to the accessible, level, and totally empty park. I can’t imagine whose “pedestrian and transportation purposes” anyone living in those brambles could possibly be obstructing.

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“Cruelty” is in the eye of the beholder, and in this instance, the only institution which can be used to determine “cruelty” is the Courts, and I don’t see any case in consideration.

“Enormous” is what it takes to build a tunnel or replace the Fairview Bridge or build one or two “lane inches” of I-5 to reduce congestion; otherwise removing obstructions is cheap.

And, finally, no one has posited that the Byzantine process of determining and removing public right of way “obstructions” is in any way designed to help the homeless; in fact, I would posit it is designed to help the whole of Seattle and the public access that the rights of way are designed to provide. And I could argue that in a public right of way or a public park, used needles on the ground, like Erica observed in her article, are an obstruction to all – especially to our children.

We may have reduced the mortality rate of HIV or Hep C or typhus or some new “plague,” but why should we subject a toddler to a lifetime of carrying such pestilence. (I am not picking on toddlers, merely suggesting that because they tend to live closer to the ground than adults and have yet to understand the nuances of balance on just two limbs they are at higher risk of encountering used needles up close and personal.)

I see Erica’s article as describing the changes to the process of removing obstructions from public rights of way and public parks. (Sidebar: Damn does that woman have great pipes into City government; the ST should be slobbering all over themselves to hire her away from her own gig.) However, by the article’s construct and wording, Erica leads us to conclude that the “obstruction removal” thing is treating a symptom, not the underlying “disease.” Both are necessary for sure.

So what is an effective strategy for treating the underlying causes? More importantly, what are the underlying causes? Eric Johnson in “Seattle is Dying” pointed to a primary underlying cause: drug addiction.

But is that the whole story?

Some truth in advertising: Though I am a conservative Republican who would not vote for Jenny on a dare, I applaud the Mayor’s actions to remove the public obstructions because protecting all citizens is what she is to paid to do.

The City Council, on the other hand, has it’s head so far up its collective … uhhh … never mind, (no homonyms are allowed in my writing,) that it has forgotten to determine the POLICY of addressing the symptoms AND finding the causes for our homeless “issue.”

Because once they determine what the cause is, and treat it with a shot of Policy medicine, then we can get down to addressing Seattle’s real problem; to wit: bike lines on 35th. (Okay, maybe that last comment contained a bit of sarcasm.)

The financial outlay by Seattle residents for this cruel procedure is enormous, with no result that in any way helps people experiencing homelessness.

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